The report references the violence against the predominantly Muslim Rohingya ethnic group in Myanmar, whose situation is still “terrible” and “requires the world’s attention”, according to the US Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom, Sam Brownback.

Meanwhile, he told a press briefing the situation in Myanmar’s Kachin state showed there had been “no progress” in the country.

“If anything, the administration there is doubling now its effort [in] going after the Kachin [Christian minority] in the northern part of the country, and the refugee numbers are increasing in the northern part now of Burma,” he told journalists, adding: “In recent weeks … the fighting there has expanded [and] another ethnic religious minority [is] being pushed out of the country and their normal areas.”

The ambassador said he was not given a visa when he wanted to visit the country to meet with its leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, and visit some of the areas affected by violence.

Saudi Arabia also came in for criticism, despite Saudi’s crown prince, Mohammad bin Salman, pushing a reform agenda in the conservative Kingdom by lifting restrictions on women and pledging a more “moderate” Islam.

The report referenced countless instances of people who had been harassed, arrested and convicted in Saudi Arabia because of their alleged activities and/or connections with groups that the government would deem a “threat”.

Although Brownback said he was pleased by what he had been hearing from the crown prince, he stressed that words alone were not enough and that action was needed.

On Iran, the ambassador said: “We hear and see horrific reports … on the lack of religious freedom and the persecution of people that aren’t in the majority faith stream and practising as the government directs, and we see a radical export of that philosophy as well out of Iran, and trouble in many other countries in the Middle East.”